YMCA Library & e-Learning Centre

“The YMCA Library & e-Learning Centre started operation as a new project of the Trivandrum YMCA on the 30th March 2009. The sole objective of this project is to spread education and learning among all sections of people. This has been also one of the avowed objectives of YMCA as an international organization. The immediate interest in attempting at a library project was the closing down of the British Council Library which functioned in this very building during the past 44 years serving the intellectual public of Trivandrum. A library to substitute for the closed down British Council Library is far beyond the resources of YMCA at present. Nevertheless, it has decided to try something that would be useful to the reading public, and especially the youth, in Trivandrum, in the changed information environment. Thus the present library project does not aim at building up a large book collection and other print media materials , whereas it will concentrate on matter of fact reference and consultation library with adequate resources for IT- based information search and learning. The focus will be on a New Age Library wherein our members and patrons can get a Virtual Library environment and experience, so to say a “library without walls”, rather than access to a self-sufficient library in the physical sense. Hence our physical library component will be confined to a small but balanced collection of essential items of Reference and Learning value. This library project is being planned and developed by Prof. C. A. Augustine, former Head of the Department of Library & Information Science, University of Kerala, in association with P. Sanjeev, former Senior I.T. Officer, Kerala Agricultural University.”